Nonlinear pricing and exclusion: I. buyer opportunism

We study the exclusionary properties of nonlinear price‐quantity schedules in an Aghion‐Bolton style model with elastic demand and product differentiation. We distinguish three regimes, depending on whether and how the price charged by the dominant firm depends on the quantity purchased from the rival firm. We find that the supply of rival good is distorted downward. Moreover, given the quantity supplied from the rival, the buyer may opportunistically purchase inefficiently many units from the dominant firm to pocket quantity rebates. We show that the possibility for the buyer to dispose of unconsumed units attenuates the opportunism problem and limits the exclusionary effects of nonlinear pricing.     

Engineering Hedonic Attributes to Generate Perceptions of Luxury: Consumer Perception of an Everyday Sound

For the last twenty years, the perception of hedonic attributes has been a problematic matter in consumer research. We argue that the perception of a hedonic product attribute should not be considered as an irreducible holistic experience, but rather as a complex set of sensory experiences, the components of which are identifiable and quantifiable. We provide evidence for this position by proposing a reliable method linking the features of product-related sound stimuli to consumer perception of hedonic attributes. To our knowledge, this study is the first of its kind offering a detailed investigation of consumer perception of everyday sounds (as opposed to music). We discuss managerial and consumer-level implications of the findings and provide an agenda for future research.     

Stock Markets,Banks and Long Run Economic Growth: A Panel Cointegration-Based Analysis

The aim of this paper is to investigate the long run relationship between the development of banks and stock markets and economic growth. We make use of a Johansen-based panel cointegration methodology allowing for cross-country dependence to test the number of cointegrating vectors among these three variables for 5 developing countries. In addition, we test the direction of potential causality between financial and economic development. Our results conclude to the existence of a single cointegrating vector between financial development and growth and of causality going from financial development to economic growth. We find little evidence of reverse causation as well as bi-directional causality. We interpret this as evidence supporting the significance of financial development for economic development although banks and stock markets may have different effects depending on the level of economic development.     

Comparing Regulations to Protect the Commons: An Experimental Investigation

In a laboratory experiment we test three regulations imposed on a common-pool resource game with heterogeneous users: an access fee and subsidy scheme, transferable quotas and non-transferable quotas. We calibrate the game so that all regulations improve users’ profits compared to free-access extraction. We compare the regulations according to five criteria: resource preservation, individual profits, profit difference, Pareto-improvement from free-access and sorting of the most efficient users. One of the main findings is that, even though it performs better in sorting out the most efficient subjects, the fee and subsidy scheme is not more profitable than tradable quotas.     

An extension of the multi-output state-contingent production model

This paper presents new developments on the state-contingent theory of production under uncertainty with stochastic prices. Our main purpose is to generalize the usual finite discrete state-contingent production model to infinite dimensional, possibly uncountable spaces which look like a more realistic framework. Usual duality results are established in this general context, shedding some light on the links between risk-neutral probabilities and shadow prices. A direct generalized production risk premium is defined and is shown to be independent of the inputs level when the technology is output translation homothetic. In such a case, the technology exhibits constant absolute riskiness. We thank Bob Chambers for his helpful comments.     

The possibilities and limits of telework in a bureaucratic environment: lessons from the public sector

By modifying the spatial and temporal framework of work, telework involves a reorganisation of the conduct of work that affects the employment relationship in different ways. In this paper, we focus on control issues. Based on the empirical study of two experiences led in the public sector, we illustrate the necessity to redefine the rules of control and to recast managerial practices and role.